New Mexico III: Taos Pueblo, Elizabethtown, Eagle Lake and Angel Fire

On Sunday, November 9th, we rised early to photograph the Saint Francis of Assisi Church at Rancho de Taos again.  This time from the front when it was bathed in the morning light.  it was cold and our van was stucked in the car park with all the other cars of church goer.  We end up walk over to a nice restaurant, Ranchos Plaza Grill for breakfast.  It had some amazing mural painting.  Here are the photos.

After breakfast, we drove to visit the famous Taos Pueblo.  The adobe walled buildings are over 1000 years old.  The material is made up of clay and grass, thus it disintegrates in the rain and has to be repaired continuously.  The buildings are actively live in with no modern electricity, water and plumbing.  The local indians received their own language and culture education in addition to normal American education.  The color of the wall and the smoke from cooking fooled the camera's computer.  The pictures have to be extensively reworked by computer software to bring out their true color.  Here are the photos.

We then drove through the Enchanted Circle route around Wheeler Peak (13,000 ft), stopped by the Red River to photograph the mountain stream, frozen lake and beaver dam.  We end up in an abandoned mining town, Elizabethtown.  There were many old barn, horses, farm equipments to  photograph.  We also meet up with the gospel music group of "Cowboys for  Christ" in the local church.  They sang for us with their amazing voice and served us their moose chilli. Here are the photos.

The most interesting subject in the Elizabethtown to photograph was this old truck.  It was very colorful and the photographs came out perfect.  Unlike the photos from the Taos Pueblo, it needs no additional work up on the computer.  Here are more of them.

After the "Cowboys of Christ" sang the "Amazing Grace" for us, we were ready to leave.  Then we saw this amazing light, a real alpenglow, across the field, "The Load is shinning light on us".  It is followed by a beautiful sunset.  We chased the beautiful color all the way to the Eagle Lake, in time to photograph the moon rise.  We finished the trip by photographing the Vietnam Memorial at Angel Fire in the dark.  Here are the photos.